How to out smart a roof jumping kid.

The other day I was thinking how cool it would be to have the persuasive power that could make people say, "Golly. Not only was I wrong, but probably stupid as well, and perhaps a little bit insane. I now adopt your viewpoint as my own. Would you like a bite of my sandwich?"

I was standing in Wal Mart recently when I overheard a kid asking his father if he could get on the roof when they got home. Of course you don’t want your 7yr old playing on the roof so my imagined argument to the question would go like this:

Kid: Can I climb on the roof?

Me: No. You'd get hurt.

Kid: I'll be careful. And my friend Elmo climbs on his roof all the time. He never falls off and he’s not very retarded.

Now at this point you realize that regular reasoning isn't going to win the day. You have to resort to the "Because I said so" fall-back, but while effective, that never seems like a clean win to me. To the kid it appears you don't have a good reason and you're just being an ass about it. That's why I would imagine the rest of the discussion going this way:

Me: Do you know who invented the roof?

Kid: No.

Me: It wasn't a kid. In fact, nothing important has ever been invented by a kid. Do you know why that is?

Kid: I don't care.

Me: It's because your brain won't be fully developed until sometime in your twenties.

Kid: I'm not listening TRA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!!

Me: You don't understand why you can't go on the roof because your brain isn't developed enough to understand the risk involved.

Kid: You suck. I hate you.

Me: I'll make you a deal. If you can find anything in our house that was invented by a kid, I'll admit that kids know as much as adults and you can climb on the roof. Use my computer, which incidentally was invented by adults. Go nuts.

(seven hours later)

Kid: Golly. Not only was I wrong, but probably stupid as well, and perhaps a little bit insane. I now adopt your viewpoint as my own. Would you like a bite of my sandwich?

Me: Thanks, but the last time you washed your hands was in amniotic fluid.

Parenting....how hard could it be?

One billion years of beer on the wall

Being agnostic I don’t subscribe to a single omnipotent being. I’ve often said I think it’s more of a group of deities of some sort. They have an amazing sense of humor and…they all wear clown noses. You know…to display the point they are some humorous mo’ fo’s.

This used to be only a theory of mine but now, through science, I can prove my Clown Nose Deity theory.

I have learned that there is a massively huge cloud of alcohol in the far reaches of the universe. This cloud actually consists to the same type of alcohol we use to make beer.

The cloud is called G34.3 and is in the constellation Aquilla. It is so big it’s hard to fathom. It’s 1000x the diameter of our entire solar system and contains so much alcohol it could provide 300 thousand beers each day for every person on earth for 1 billion years.

Maybe just a little less than that because I made the cloud somewhat smaller this weekend but, if you believe in a God, you now have proof he wants you to drink beer and is probably drunk too.

1000x the diameter of our solar system. That’s one hell of a big bar. Wonder who’s playing this weekend? We better leave now because it 220 light years from earth.

Inflatable turd orphan injurer alert!!

I like to spot sentences that have probably never been uttered.
And believe me…I have.
This hobby is like bird watching but without the inconvenience of going outside and looking for birds.
The trick is that the unique sentences have to be natural, not just a bunch of random words strung together. Take for example the following question:
Did you hear about the inflatable Swiss dog turd that attacked an orphanage?

That sentence qualifies, even though I wrote it myself, but the event actually happened.
Apparently there was an inflatable poo sculpture in a park in Switzerland that a gust of wind got a hold of, pulled it out of the ground, and slammed it into a nearby orphanage.

Luckily no orphans were injured in the attack. And no one is more relieved, so to speak, than the artist who squeezed out that masterpiece. I mean, if just once in your entire life you create a huge inflatable turd that injures an orphan, it sort of erases anything else you might do. You'll always be that guy.
“You inflatable turd orphan injurer!”

I wonder how you get rid of a huge inflatable turd when you no longer want it. Do you take it to the dump just to be ironic? Or do you rent it on weekends for kid parties?

I'd probably put stucco on it and make it my home. That way when company came over, and I hadn't bothered to clean up, I would just say, "I'm sorry, my house looks like crap." Everyone would laugh and laugh, and not even care that the floor is seven layers of CD’s, clothing, and miscellaneous Skittles. Anyway, if you accept a dinner invitation inside a giant turd, you probably started out with low expectations.

And what if the inflatable dog turd gets punctured? Would the first person to notice exclaim "Holy crap!"?
And if not, would that person regret the missed opportunity for the rest of his natural life? I know I would.
I have trouble releasing that sort of thing. For me, it would be like training all my life for the Olympics and forgetting to set my alarm on the day of my event. It would haunt me.

And on a totally unrelated note, I learned this morning that the minimum age of Olympic athletes is 16yrs old. Have you seen some of the Chinese athletes? No way they are 16. I saw one of them turn 42 flips in a row and she looked as if she was not a day over 4yrs old.

And on a totally completely unrelated note, I also learned that Julia Childs, world famous chef type lady thing, was a spy in WWII.
You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me!
What did she do, cruise around with microphones hidden in basted turkeys?

I gotta go have a single serving frozen dinner and trip over some CD’s on that one.